DUMBO was in the spotlight on Thursday, December 7, when Ken Burns returned to the Brooklyn Museum for an event showcasing a beautifully remastered version of his first film, Brooklyn Bridge (1981). The documentary, which premiered at the Brooklyn Museum after 5 years in the making, tells the inspiring and quixotic tale of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge, a monument so practical in purpose, so large in scope, so stunning in beauty, and so enduring in significance, that it spans not only the East River but also the world as an icon of human ingenuity, civic responsibility, and artistic excellence.

Burns’s film explores the private genius of the bridge’s creators — John, Washington and Emily Warren Roebling — who engineered the largest suspension bridge in the world at the time, the public euphoria that gripped New York when the bridge opened to the public in 1883, and the bridge’s subsequent effect on the city. To do it, he pioneered a style of photography and storytelling now known, via an off-screen assist by Steve Jobs, as the Ken Burns Effect. (more…)